


solarium

by Reishiin



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 00:20:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6172528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reishiin/pseuds/Reishiin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>And come the spring, the one whose flower blooms most beautiful will inherit everything.</i>
</p><p>(Regent Akaba Reiji searches for an heir to the kingdom of Pendulum)</p>
            </blockquote>





	solarium

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the version of The Empty Pot in [this tumblr post](http://undercover-witch.tumblr.com/post/137863048549/magica-tenore-regina-lizthefangirl)

 

 

 

 

 

When Yuushou-ou passed away from illness, the kingdom of Pendulum fell into a long dark winter. In a single afternoon the sky changed from blue to overcast grey, the air turned chilly, and the ground grew heavy with sleet and cold rain. That day the moon priestess looked out of the window of the highest tower at the sky outside and said that until a rightful ruler again takes the throne, the kingdom will never again see summer.

But Yuushou-ou was the last of his siblings, and left no children. So the burden of ruling had fallen to the late king’s advisor and strategist, a somber and quiet young man who had followed Yuushou-ou from the day of his coronation. Akaba Reiji's rule as regent is just and fair, but he never smiles, and there are shadows under his eyes. They say he never wanted the kingdom. He wants only to be left alone to mourn.

 _One year,_ Kurosaki Shun says, his fingers tightening in the fabric over the regent's arm where they walk together through the dying palace gardens. For the sake of all of them, for that long at least, the one called Akaba Reiji must hold on.

All around them, the air is silent except for the sound of brittle leaves breaking underfoot. Akaba Reiji looks up at the grey and empty sky, at the sleet that falls against his face and into his eyes, and says, "I know what I have to do."

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Later, Akaba Reiji will issue a pronouncement throughout the kingdom inviting each township and province to send to the capital city a young man or woman of age, from among whom will be chosen the next ruler of the kingdom. Those adolescents don heavy shoes and cloaks to make the long journey from the borderlands and the far provinces at the Regent's invitation, and to each of them, Akaba Reiji gives a gift: a single seed from the palace gardens' last flowers. _They represent my heart,_ Akaba Reiji says, _and my wishes for the future of this kingdom Yuushou-ou left behind. Please care for them through this long cold winter, and come the time when it should be spring, the one whose flower blooms most beautiful will inherit everything._

Akaba Reiji had closed his eyes then, and those who looked at his face then would have seen some fleeting sadness in his smile.

 

 

Later that day, in the relative warmth of the banquet halls repurposed for the travelers to relax and unwind, Kurosaki Shun will take the time to speak a few words to each of the visitors, and welcome them properly to the capital city.

Sakaki Yuuya from Standard has shed the coat and scarf that had obscured his face, and in this warm and well-lit place, his laugh is as bright as the sun in summer. "Before the winter, I used to tend to the flower garden back home," he is saying to the boy beside him, "and grow beautiful things that make everyone smile. So, when I heard the Regent was looking, I had to go..."

Yuugo from Synchro is nodding in assent, but like almost everyone else there, he's more interested in the food and gifts that have been laid out for them, Most of them have never seen even a fraction of such riches in their lives, and are trying to enjoy this comfort to the fullest while they can. But Yuuya continues talking, oblivious. "Come to think about it—there's an air of sadness about the Regent, isn't there?" Yuugo just looks at him with a quizzical expression before turning back to shoveling food into his mouth, and Yuuya shakes his head, like he's trying to forget about it.

Three days later, after the visitors have put their traveling garments back on and departed once again for home with Akaba Reiji's gifts in tow. Surveying the mess they have left behind and not even bothered to try to tidy, Kurosaki has to ask, "Do you really think you'll find the next king among this lot?"

For a long time Akaba Reiji doesn't reply, just looks at the blizzard outside the window and the grey and storming sky, and then closes his eyes like he's trying to remember something. And then he says, "That's the plan, Kurosaki, that's the plan."

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

During his travels, Kurosaki stops at the of the village called Standard, and finds Sakaki Yuuya in one of the hothouses tending to a row of small dicotyledon seedlings. Now that the sky is always grey and the air always cold, it is difficult to grow plants. But even though time itself seems to have frozen over, people's lives cannot stop. They must still find some way to live on.

On hearing the footsteps, Sakaki Yuuya straightens and turns to greet his visitor.  Kurosaki sees that his smile is still as bright as the summer that is not yet and might never be.  As he returns the greeting politely, he also asks after Akaba Reiji’s gift.

Sakaki Yuuya’s smile falters then. “—It's this one,” he says, and walks over to another row of flowerpots where one lies conspicuously empty. “I have tried everything—varying temperatures, soil conditions, light and humidity—but nothing works. It will not...”

"Akaba Reiji-sama says that the winner of this contest will inherit everything that Yuushou-ou left behind. For that reason, the task cannot be easy."

"Even so, I—" Sakaki Yuuya looks up through the glass of the solarium's roof  and into the grey sky, where the sleet is still falling. The snow will never stop, some people say, until it covers everything. “Akaba-sama said, that day, that these seeds represent his heart. There is a sadness that runs through him, is there not? Perhaps it is that, until that wound is healed, none of those flowers can grow.” But Kurosaki tells Yuuya then of the other plants he has seen on his journeys, bursting with life, red and blue and violet and green.

“—So it really is just me who cannot do it, then,” Sakaki Yuuya says, with a rather different sort of smile. "And Akaba Reiji-sama, how is he...?"

"He is—" _fine_ , Kurosaki begins to reply, but there is something in Sakaki Yuuya's unconditional concern for the regent that reminds Kurosaki indelibly of some long-ago spring. So Kurosaki tells Sakaki Yuuya about the late king, and how he alone of everyone had noticed the talent that lay behind Akaba Reiji's unassuming demeanour and gave him a place to exist in the world. How Akaba Reiji has only found meaning in existence when he was in the service of Yuushou-ou, and now that the king is gone, he is left with nothing.

Somewhere in the telling Sakaki Yuuya has clasped his hand unconsciously over his heart, and now when he lets it fall, there is the shape of something beneath the fabric. "This?" he says, following Kurosaki's eyes and retrieving the blue crystal from beneath his tunic. "It’s something my father left me. I never even knew him..."

And Kurosaki thinks— so that boy and and Akaba Reiji have that in common, at least.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

"How will you decide?" Kurosaki asks when he returns to the capital, and Akaba Reiji replies, "I won't have to."

The regent's expression is shuttered like the blizzard in the sky. He tells Kurosaki that he has never believed that this kingdom can survive Yuushou-ou, so before he distributed the seeds, he burned them in the fire. They can no longer grow, or change, or breathe. The bright colours that Kurosaki saw are only the bright colours of deceit.

—Akaba Reiji is not trying to find a successor. He is trying to bring the entire kingdom to ruin.

Before she left for the wastelands, Serena used to say that Akaba Reiji's heart died with Yuushou-ou and left only cold intellect in the shell of his body. Seeing him now, looking up into the sky where pale sunlight fractures through the sleet—Kurosaki can believe it.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

On the day that spring should have dawned but did not, the candidates return once more to the capital city, carefully shielding the products of their labour from the chill and the wind. As Akaba Reiji walks past all of them holding their cultivated blossoms with hopeful smiles on their faces, his shuttered expression does not change, until he comes to Sakaki Yuuya, whose hands are empty.

Akaba Reiji turns to the waiting audience, then, and tells them the truth of what he did. Then he asks the boy in a neutral voice why he has bothered to show himself here when he could not even produce results.

The words fall out of Sakaki Yuuya like he's been rehearsing them for days. "Every morning I arrived at the solarium with the first light of the sun, and every morning, there was nothing. And when the last day arrived, I thought for sure that I had failed—"

“But you came anyway,” Reiji replies.

Yuuya laughs shakily. “Would you believe it, Akaba-sama, if I said I just wanted to see you?”

(A long time ago, someone else very important had said, _Would you believe it, Reiji-kun, if I said I just wanted to see you?)_

Even so, Akaba Reiji hesitates. He has always played his cards close to his chest, but Kurosaki has spent enough time in the regent's presence to have some idea of what he is thinking. He had not expected anyone to pass this test at all, and even though Sakaki Yuuya has surpassed his greatest expectations— to give the kingdom of Pendulum like this to someone who has neither any connection to the royal house nor training in stewardship could only be an insult to the late king's memory.

But this is the secret that has been kept from everyone, even Akaba Reiji: before Yuushou-ou became king, his name was Sakaki. When he took the throne years ago, he hid away his family so that they could never be used against him. Sakaki Yuuya, who bears Pendulum's coat of arms on the pendant he wears around his neck— is really that man's child, and the true prince who must inherit everything.

So it's fine to let this happen, he tells Akaba Reiji. It's really fine.

And as Sakaki Yuuya takes from Akaba Reiji's hands the crown the regent has always refused to wear, outside the window, the snow stops falling.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The evening of Sakaki Yuuya's coronation ceremony, in the rapidly falling dark, Akaba Reiji disposes of the last of his possessions and sets off on horseback for the capital gates. Even though the blizzards no longer rage, the air is still cold and the sky is still grey. People say in uncertain voices that it will just take time for everything to return to normal. But Kurosaki is beginning to think that Akaba Reiji had been right when he said that Pendulum was destined to die.

 _Where will you go?_ Kurosaki asks.

 _Where no one can follow,_ Akaba Reiji replies.

It's at that moment Sakaki Yuuya dashes out of the city gates, flushed and breathless with exertion and a wild look in his eyes. "Akaba-sama," he says. He must have run all the way from the palace. "Please, stay..."

He's shed the ceremonial trappings for the same simple clothes he wore the day he first arrived in the capital city. Akaba Reiji steps off the horse who paws at the ground behind him, and falls to his knees before Pendulum's new king.  He does not say anything, and his face is obscured beneath the hood of his cloak.

And Kurosaki does not believe in magic, but the way the air lifts and changes then-- it's really as if the never-ending winter is finally turning to spring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
